OIL
Iran, China sign deal
Iran and China agreed to jointly invest US$12 billion over 10 years in developing Iran’s Azadegan oil field, state-run Press TV reported on its Web site. Azadegan, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, has 42 billion barrels in reserves and will add 600,000 barrels a day to the nation’s daily crude oil output, Press TV said, citing Petroleum Engineering & Development Co managing director Naji Sadouni. The first phase of the field’s development will take 52 months, during which 185 wells will be drilled, it said.
FINANCE
EU finances to improve
Chief Executive Officer of the European Stability Facility (EFSF) Klaus Regling believes the eurozone will overcome its current debt crisis by 2014. “One can justifiably expect the crisis to be over within two to three years,” he told Spiegel in the edition out yesterday. “In all eurozone countries the fundamentals are improving.” All eurozone countries have started putting their finances in order and already some of those worst affected by the crisis, such as Ireland, are back on their feet, he said. The EFSF was set up last year to help shore up debt-ridden countries. Its role is shortly to be expanded in line with measures agreed to by eurozone leaders last month. Regling believes the eurozone’s financial situation is better than that of the US. “The US deficit, for example, is three times as high as that of the eurozone,” he said.
INTERNET
Facebook to end Deals
Facebook is to end a Deals program launched in April which offered online bargains like Groupon, LivingSocial and other companies. “After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” the California-based social network said in a statement. “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses ... We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.” Facebook began testing Deals in five US cities in a bid to expand its revenue stream beyond advertising and carve out a niche in the growing online bargain space. Chicago-based Groupon, which offers subscribers discounts on a broad range of consumer goods and services, has enjoyed a spectacular rise since its founding in 2008 and rejected a reported US$5 billion takeover offer from Google last year.
AUTOMAKERS
Car boss makes donation
South Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor said yesterday that its chairman would give US$462 million to charity, partly fulfilling a pledge made in 2006 when he was being investigated for corruption. Chung Mong-koo will donate shares worth 500 billion won (US$462 million) in Hyundai Glovis — a Hyundai Motor subsidiary — to help children from poor families, the company said in a statement. The money will be donated to a charity group founded by Hyundai, it said, adding the sum was the largest personal donation ever made in South Korea. The move came amid calls for Chung, 73, to honor his promise to donate 1 trillion won. Chung was later convicted of embezzling 90 billion won in company funds through fraudulent accounting, with the intention of establishing a slush fund to bribe government officials and politicians in return for business favors.
SPEED OF LIGHT: US lawmakers urged the commerce department to examine the national security threats from China’s development of silicon photonics technology US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday said it is finalizing rules that would limit US investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security. The rules, which were proposed in June by the US Department of the Treasury, were directed by an executive order signed by Biden in August last year covering three key sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain AI systems. The rules are to take effect on Jan. 2 next year and would be overseen by the Treasury’s newly created Office of Global Transactions. The Treasury said the “narrow
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of